We are witnessing an attempt to spread new historical, communal, and emotional narratives with a speed and perseverance unseen in the post-independence era. The promoters of this populist ideology have managed to bring minds into their hold across class and geography through a combination of on-ground community vigilance, tight control over news-media, and clever use of digital media strategies.

Foucault’s notion of Knowledge-Power gives us a framework to critically examine the fabrication of these new ‘regimes of truth’. We trace his idea that power is not solely a destructive force, but also a ‘producer of reality’. Control over knowledge, through surveillance and censorship as we see today, allows the state to build and propagate narratives that will consolidate its political power for the next electoral cycle. The exhibition is a means to document this phenomenon as it occurs around us, while simultaneously trying to understand it and its implications further.

This exploratory ‘in-progress’ viewing will present a subset of the final exhibition, featuring Arko Datto’s photographs of commonplace surveillance, Mandeep Raikhy’s diffused movement piece performed to Samar Grewal’s charged composition, Asim Waqif’s commentary on news media, Sandip Kuriakose’s document as a testimony to discrimination, and Payal Arya’s landscape of hazed diversions.

The final exhibition concept, part two of the ongoing series ‘Allies for the Uncertain Futures’ curated by Shaunak Mahbubani, has been chosen for an Apexart international exhibition grant, and will be exhibited in late 2018.

Featuring: Arko Datto | Asim Waqif | Mandeep Raikhy | Payal Arya | Samar Grewal | Sandip Kuriakose